In home and office remodeling, it is often necessary or desirable to remove existing wallpaper before applying another surface finish. The problem that presents itself is that the adhesives with which the wallpaper has been applied to the surface of the wall prevent its easy removal at the time of remodeling. Strenuous manual activity is expended in the use of a hand held scrapper in bringing it repeatedly against the wallpaper while the wallpaper is being removed. It is typically necessary to use the hand held scraper technique whenever the wallpaper to be removed has one or more coats of paint applied thereto, which prevents the use of chemical wallpaper removal fluids, and also for removing adhesive residues off of the exposed surfaces of the walls. The manual wallpaper removal technique is not only strenuous and thus tiresome but it also is time consuming. Various motorized devices such as the hand tool of U.S. Pat. No. 2,722,072 and the stripping tool of U.S. Pat. No. 2,589,138 that are specially designed and dedicated to wallpaper removal are known. The purchase of an entirely new instrument, is, however, often not warranted in view of the relative infrequency with which wallpaper is removed by most users. Various adapters are also known, such as those shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,182,000 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,286,383 for oscillating-type power instruments. These devices, however, have been difficult to manipulate due to their cumbersomeness, and, among other disadvantages, have been generally incapable of accepting extenders so that their operation near the ceiling would undesirably require the use of a ladder or other such tool.